The two-part exhibition, that will take place in both the Galerie oqbo and in the Projektraum at the Deutsche Künstlerbund, will present works from 75 American and German artists, and will offer an overview of different contemporary manifestations of abstract art. The works of the American Abstract Artists will be complemented by a selection of ten works each by the Galerie oqbo (from the Paperfile collection) and the Deutsche Künsterlbund.

“Our purpose is to unite abstract artists residing in the United States, to bring before the public their individual works, and in every possible way foster public appreciation for this direction in painting and sculpture. We believe that a new art form has been established which is definite enough in character to demand this united effort. (From the preface to the 1938 catalogue of the American Abstract Artists’ second annual exhibition)

It was 1936, and the country was in the middle of the Great Depression. Though most public presentations of art were conservative, capturing the subdued tone of a nation under economic siege, the Museum of Modern Art mounted the first exhibition of cubist and abstract art—but neglected American artists working in this vein. Angry, many of these artists formed a support network, led by Carl Holty, Harry Holtzman, and George L. K. Morris, and they began to meet informally at the studio of Ibram Lassaw, discussing ways to change the perception of their work and to bring more attention to their ideas and ideals. One can imagine the energy, the vibrant talk, the vigorous camaraderie that developed during these evenings. And in 1937, this informal group exhibited together for the first time at the Squibb Gallery on 57th Street as the American Abstract Artists.

These were heady days, and the success of their first exhibition led to a growth in membership, more exhibitions, lectures, and catalogues. Many years later, one of the original members, Esphyr Slobodkina, remembered, “Critical opinion was about equally divided between scathing denunciations and benign curiosity.” Not discouraged, the group thrived though the critics remained hostile, culminating in 1940 when the group formed a picket line in front of the Museum of Modern Art, protesting the lack of recognition and respect by such institutions.

During World War II, European artists Piet Mondrian, Fernand Lèger, and László Moholy-Nagy emigrated to America and found a sympathetic community among the members of the AAA. Mondrian became a member of the group and was something of a spiritual mentor to many of them, along with Hans Hofmann, who never joined, but whose inspirational teaching spawned a new generation of like-minded artists. In the 1950s, the more robust abstraction of Mondrian was replaced by a quiet stillness, particularly evident in the work and writings of artists like Ad Reinhardt and Burgoyne Diller. While abstraction seemed to be moving in new directions, the longevity of the group itself can be attributed to its lack of dogma, rejection of any party line or adherence to any manifestoes, and a general open enthusiasm for abstract art in all its variations.

Despite changes within the membership as well as in the art world, the AAA has continued strong for seventy-five years, a testament to the nurture and care of these artists who strongly believe that the abstract impulse can happily encompass diverse approaches and identities, from the dynamic structural symmetry of Mondrian, to a biomorphic, surrealist-inspired abstraction, to the rigid, grid-like forms of neoplasticism. This exhibition celebrates this achievement.”

Text by Nancy E. Green, curator of Splendor of Dynamic Structure: Celebrating 75 Years of the American Abstract Artists, January 22–March 20, 2011, at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University.

Variety Trumps Argument at the Bronx River Art Center
By Stephen Maine
artcritical
April 23, 2011

“…Matthew Deleget’s work resides toward the other end of abstraction’s spectrum as the realization, on a painted surface, of a preconceived procedural idea. The colors in Shuffle (for Grandmaster Flash) (2011) are selected at random—yellow, pink, fluorescent orange and copper predominate—and arranged by means of a predetermined system of recombination within a four-by-four unit grid. Abstraction as perceptual research, Shuffle is an extreme instance of the empirical attitude that underlies much of the work in the show, which is alert to pictorial strategies rather than intent on fetishizing subjectivities…”

The Working Title at the Bronx River Art Center
By Andrew Russeth
16 Miles of String blog
April 7, 2011

“…A small square by Matt Deleget — titled Shuffle (for Grandmaster Flash), a tribute to the hip-hop legend who grew up in the surrounding community — contains far more punch than one would expect from a painting just 18 inches on each side. Filled with bright squares of pink, yellow, and orange, it holds up well against its sprightly neighbor, a Cordy Ryman put together with just a few wood blocks.

It’s a strange thing be in the neighborhood of Grandmaster Flash, just a few blocks from the late and legendary Fashion Moda, looking at contemporary art by artists whose work one usually sees in Chelsea, on the Lower East Side, or out in Brooklyn. Strange, but nice, with friends and acquaintances brought together en masse in a new context…”

For Pared, U·turn Art Space presents works by Matthew Deleget and Ellen Nagel that consider reduction as a maneuver in painting, sculpture throughout art history. Deleget presents a series of monochrome works on panel, along with a long-term and ongoing conceptual project based in the collection of artist catalogues that have been purchased at deeply discounted prices. Nagel has created a number of brand new sculptural installations for the exhibition. Together, Deleget’s and Nagel’s work continues a line of inquiry into reduction and restraint in which U·turn is persistently invested.

Deleget’s I Love You (2007) is comprised of solidly colored plastic shopping bags that have been mounted onto nine panels. I Love You was inspired by The Beatles song All Together Now (also, a humorous reference to collaboration). In the song, Paul McCartney sings the lines, “black, white, green, red — can I take my friend to bed? — pink, brown, yellow, orange, blue — I love you.” Deleget has quoted McCartney directly, with each of the nine panels corresponding to the mentioned colors and installed in the order found in the song. Deleget uses McCartney’s lyrics to connect his practice of abstraction to unexpected cultural points of reference.

Deleget also presents a collection of books as art objects. All of the books are about living abstract artists—his inspirations—and were purchased at major art museums in New York City at heavily discounted prices. While his works on panel bespeak to Deleget’s own love and commitment to abstract art, this project questions whether the artists and their ideas have been discounted with the prices of these books.

Ellen Nagel’s assemblage sculptures are experiments in elegant restraint. Nagel creates art experiences that occupy the same space as the viewer, at approximately the same scale of the viewer. The avatars she constructs bring together found objects from home life (clothing, shopping bags), the studio (paint, drawing boards) and the cleanly institutional (modular office furniture). While there may be any number of elements in each work, their overall effect is one of absolute subtlety. As freestanding, collaged objects, they call attention to their own physical features: rigidity and slackness, buoyancy and gravity, tension and repose. She balances seemingly incidental elements with formalist choices that are precise and considered. Around their edges, her works evoke myth and metaphor as monuments to the humble and the heroic. Ultimately, they evidence the culture(s) surrounding their making.

Artist Bios
Matthew Deleget is an abstract painter, curator, and writer. He has exhibited his work nationally and internationally, including solo and group exhibitions in Europe, Asia, and Australia. He is a member of American Abstract Artists, the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation’s Artist Advisory Committee, and the board of The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts. Matthew has received awards from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, Brooklyn Arts Council, and The Golden Rule Foundation, and his work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Flash Art, Artnet Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Basler Zeitung, among others.

In 2003, Deleget founded MINUS SPACE (www.minusspace.com), a platform for reductive art on the international level based in Brooklyn, NY. MINUS SPACE’s web site is used by more than 800 people daily from 150 countries worldwide. Deleget has also organized more than two dozen solo and group exhibitions at both MINUS SPACE’s gallery in the Gowanus, Brooklyn, as well as other collaborating venues on the national and international levels. MINUS SPACE exhibitions have been reviewed in Art in America, Artnet Magazine, ArtNews, The Brooklyn Rail, Houston Public Radio, Huffington Post, The New Criterion, New York Magazine, NYFA Current, New York Sun, Time Out New York, and Village Voice, among others.

Deleget holds an MFA in Painting and an MS in Theory, Criticism and History of Art, Design and Architecture from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. He holds a BA in Art and German from Wabash College, Crawfordsville, IN. He lives with his wife, artist Rossana Martinez, and son in Brooklyn, NY.

Ellen Nagel is a Cincinnati native, where she continues to live and work. She received a BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati in 2010. Nagel appeared in U·turn Art Space’s first exhibition Brought To You By, and the gallery collective immediately sought a reprisal of Nagel’s work in a more ambitious installation. Nagel has previous participated in multiple exhibitions at the Art Academy’s Chidlaw Gallery. In 2010, she was one of several artists to create a site-specific installation in the Cincinnati Art Museum. Entitled Let Fall, the interactive work invited viewers to look behind heavy black curtains to experience a series of post-minimal painted shapes.

U·turn Art Space
U·turn Art Space is a collective-run alternative arts space that was initiated in fall 2009. The U·turn Art Space collective is comprised of five Cincinnati-based artists: Molly Donnermeyer, Matt Morris, Patricia Murphy, Zach Rawe and Eric Ruschman. With special interests in installation art and conceptual art practices, U·turn nonetheless exhibits artists with diverse aesthetics that are based in the Cincinnati region, as well as across the world, including (to date) Berlin, Germany; Chicago, IL; London, England; Miami, FL; New York, NY; Philadelphia, PA; and San Diego, CA. Its goal is to bring shows into Cincinnati that are relevant; that provide an opportunity for discourse, ideas, and play to be forced together, awkwardly or elegantly, and offer itself to a viewing audience. Along with art exhibitions, U·turn hosts a range of accompanying readings, performances and events that raise probing questions and plural perspectives. U·turn’s efforts are intended for audiences in the surrounding Brighton district, Cincinnati at large and the whole of the Midwest.

The name of the exhibition refers to the changing classification, description, or title that is given to abstraction. By nature, abstraction resists tradition and categorization transforming itself into a highly visual moving target. These artists employ abstraction as a means to investigate different approaches to materials, systems, media and content. Rather than following a pre-established doctrine of romantic sentimentality, most of the works elicit an air of experimentation, familiarity, and an overall sense of purpose.

The Working Title brings together different perspectives on abstraction in conversation with each other. Minimalism, post-modern, geometric, gestural, formal, color filed, video and process-driven works occupying the same room, creating unpredictable relationships through contrasting approaches.

Having direct access to technology has become an important tool for artists to share and discuss their practice, making connections on a regional and global level. The collective stance and attitudes on making art are less defensive than they used to be, opening up conversations with the past by seeking out and elaborating on previous approaches that may have been marginalized or forgotten.

The Working Title is less about seizing the moment, but more of a selection of current voices that use abstraction as a starting point to create work that expands the trajectory of what is possible.

This exhibition was organized by Progress Report, a visually-driven project that offers a glimpse of the creative process that share various perspectives from the working artist’s point of view.

A Slice of Splendor: Johnson Museum Showcases American Abstract Artists
by Wylie Schwartz
Ithaca Times
February 16, 2011

“…The spirit of the avant-garde, under which American abstract art came to exist, continues to manifest itself in much of the recent work on display. In Matthew Deleget’s War Monochromes (2007-11), six squares painted with fluorescent orange spray paint suggest the abstract potential for graffiti art; the radiant color spills off the canvas and onto the wall, evoking a recent trend in street art where abstract interventions rather than empirical messages or text open up exciting new realms of possibility…”

Splendor of Dynamic Structure
Celebrating 75 Years of the American Abstract Artists
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853www.museum.cornell.edu
January 22 – March 20, 2011

The American Abstract Artists, formed in 1936, were drawn to Mondrian’s ideal of the “splendor of dynamic structure.” Despite many changes since then, the AAA has continued strong for seventy-five years, a testament to their belief that the abstract impulse can encompass diverse approaches and identities, influenced by surrealism, expressionism, and landscape painting. The historical portion of this exhibition is culled from the Johnson Museum’s permanent collection, supplemented by a curated selection of works chosen from among the current members of the AAA. The exhibition and catalogue were supported by the Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason Foundation and the Cornell Council for the Arts.

International Kids Fund (IKF) is a philanthropic program of Jackson Memorial Foundation committed to helping critically ill children primarily from Latin America and the Caribbean gain immediate access to essential medical treatments that are unavailable in their respective home countries.

Thanks to the program, hundreds of foreign children with urgent health care needs have received expert attention from medical specialists at Holtz Children’s Hospital, located at University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Medical Center in Miami, Florida, United States.

IKF successfully raises funds and administers proactive assistance by having an efficient organizational and financial infrastructure in place to quickly respond to specific requests for help. Simply stated, IKF is in the business of saving young people’s lives.

Curator Scott Grow selects 32 artists from the United States, Germany, Spain and Japan to focus on the diversity of practices within painting and abstraction today.

The exhibition’s title refers to kind the “informal relations” artists have with one another, their predecessors, with the modernist tradition, the future, and even with their own work. While works on paper may stand as finished works, they are also often places for exploration, thinking, planning, taking chances, and failure.
The show explores the challenges of abstract art. Since it typically refuses expected representation, language and absolute interpretation, it requires the viewer’s engagement and participation. Abstraction is not a singular school or style, the term itself is not necessarily helpful in identifying the qualities or concepts of the art object. Abstract artists often have shared and conflicting objectives for the art they make.

In response to these challenges with their genre of art, each artist in Informal Relations presents a definition of abstract painting. The exhibition explores the similarities, differences, and connections between these artists, their dialog with abstraction’s history, and various directions forward for abstraction.

Conversations with Robert Swain
Directed and edited by Peter Canale
Stocan Films, 2010

A 5-part online film series covering the life and work of NYC artist Robert Swain. Interview by Matthew Deleget, artist and founder of MINUS SPACE. Produced to accompany the exhibition Visual Sensations: The Paintings of Robert Swain: 1967 – 2010 at Hunter College/Times Square Gallery in New York, NY, from October 7 – November 13, 2010.

Cytoarchitecture brings together six artists whose diverse practices are loosely threaded together by a number of intersecting concerns. These interests include abstraction, a reductive aesthetic and correlations between biological and constructed forms. The exhibition will include installation, live-feed video, automated sound sculptures, wall-drawings and modified found objects.

Matthew Deleget is a New York-based non-objective artist and curator who runs MINUS SPACE in Brooklyn. Melanie Irwin, who has shown both nationally and in Europe, utilizes sculpture, photography, video and performance. Most recently her work was seen at Blindside in Melbourne and at the John Fries Memorial Prize in Sydney where she was awarded second prize. Liang Xia Luscombe is an artist and writer and is currently Writer-in-Residence at Canberra Contemporary Art Space. Taree Mackenzie’s video works have been shown nationally and most recently she featured in Achromatism – Recent Video Work from the ACT, at the Queensland Centre for Photography. Riki-Metisse Marlow’s practice crosses automated sound-sculpture and performance with her work being seen most recently at the Format Festival, as part of Adelaide Fringe Festival. Kent Wilson is an artist, curator and writer whose sculptural sound works were most recently seen at Seventh Gallery, Melbourne.

Colour and light are capable of generating diverse culturally loaded readings as well as strong physical sensations. Their readings are complex, interpreted as physical phenomena (sensation) and symbolic codes (knowledge).

The exhibition grows out of an interest in the tradition and diverse readings of the MONOCHROME via painting to include: constructions, interventions, photography, moving-image and installation by New Zealand and international artists. BUT rather than interpreting the MONOCHROME as a traditional formalist model, the exhibition brings the MONOCHROME into the C21where it is employed as a device to manifest an awareness of colour, light, movement and time AMID THE WORLD in order to help us see our experiencing of our world.

The artworks in this exhibition celebrate complexity, transience, and the contingent nature of being. They offer us a range of approaches whilst engaging us with experiencing, perceiving, understanding, reading and feeling and ask us to consider how these processes unfold and develop over time.

This project exhibits works by established international artists alongside works of a newer generation.

Lisa Benson (NZ) photographic drawings emphasizes time through the recording of changing light in the tradition of concrete photography.

The glass and vinyl film works of Christoph Dahlhausen (GER), are informed by Non Objective and phenomenological explorations of light and colour, placed in situ that play with reflection, light and colour

Noel Ivanoff (NZ). His work manifests time and duration through a sensitive material awareness of gesture, structure and fabrication.

Matthew Deleget (USA) produces paintings/ installations that exploit the monochrome tradition via specific use of encoded colour and exaggerated gesture to address political and psychological content.

The video works of Laresa Kosloff (AUS) use colour, timing to combine the tropes of sport and modernism to create works of contemplation and humour.

William Mackrell (UK). His photos and his use of cones of light to pictorialise space with ordinary materials in a manner that enables us become aware of our changing experience of space, light in time .

The durational paintings of Simon Morris (NZ) manifest time through their use of colour, process and materiality to generate an awareness of movement of time and space.

David Sequeira (AUS). His long study of the colour in paintings and installations has been translated into a new body of photographic and video works manifesting time and change, in an affectionate and playful manner.

The photopaintings and paintings of David Thomas (AUS) use the monochrome as a vehicle/interval in assisting us to recognise what surrounds it where it is placed amid the world.

Alejandra von Hartz Gallery is pleased to announce the two-person exhibition Color Climate: Matthew Deleget / David E. Peterson. The exhibition will feature new abstract painting installations by Brooklyn artist Matthew Deleget and Atlanta artist David E. Peterson. Color Climate will be the artists’ first exhibition with the gallery and it will take place from September 11 to October 30, 2010, with an opening reception on Saturday, September 11, from 7-10 pm.

Matthew Deleget is a conceptual, reductive painter who will present an installation of new Shuffle paintings. Informed by the “shuffle” feature on his iPod, each painting consists of a checkered grid of four colors completely selected at random, producing visual results that vary widely. The gallery walls where his paintings are to be installed will also be painted various colors selected at random. This specific series of paintings, made of acrylic paint, including fluorescent, metallic, and iridescent colors, on thin archival masonite panels, is directly inspired by the legendary salsa ensemble Fania All-Stars. Each painting will pay homage to a specific musician in the group, including Johnny Pacheco, Hector Lavoe, Celia Cruz, Ray Barretto, and Larry Harlow, among others.

David E. Peterson makes rule-based paintings that are informed by high-end industrial design goods, including laptop computers, athletic shoes, men’s fashion, and Modern architecture. For Color Climate, David will present three new suites of paintings from his ongoing Product Abstraction series. The paintings present his investigation into the formal qualities and associated consumer aspirations of three specific lines of designer goods, including Nixon’s Newton watch collection, Asics’ Onitsuka Tiger line of sneakers, and wallets designed by Paul Smith. The individual paintings, made from acrylic and UV resin on MDF and produced in finite series, similar to the design goods themselves, will be installed in large grid formations on the gallery walls.

Matthew Deleget
Matthew Deleget (b. 1972) has exhibited his work nationally and internationally, including solo and group exhibitions in Europe, Asia, and Australia. He is a member of American Abstract Artists and has received awards from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, Brooklyn Arts Council, and The Golden Rule Foundation. His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Flash Art, Artnet Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Basler Zeitung, among others. In 2003, Matthew founded MINUS SPACE (www.minusspace.com), a platform for reductive art on the international level based in Brooklyn, NY. He has curated more than two dozen solo and group exhibitions at both MINUS SPACE, as well as other collaborating venues on the national and international levels. Matthew holds an MFA in Painting and an MS in Theory, Criticism and History of Art, Design and Architecture from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. He lives and works in Brooklyn,NY.

David E. Peterson
David E. Peterson (b. 1979) is an abstract painter who has exhibited his work throughout the United States and Europe. His work is included in the collections of the New Museum of Contemporary Art (Detroit), Progressive Art Collection, Home Depot, and Related Group, among many others. His work has been profiled on Forbes.com, Loft Magazine, Southern Living, CNN, and Detroit Free Press. David holds a BFA from the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit, MI, and is currently pursuing his MFA at Georgia State University in Atlanta, GA. He lives and works in Atlanta, GA.

Alejandra von Hartz Gallery
Founded in 2002, Alejandra von Hartz Gallery’s mission is to exhibit, promote, and sell Contemporary Art by emerging and established artists with an emphasis on Latin American Art, Geometric Abstraction, Minimalism, and Conceptual Art. Our goal is to represent the similarities and differences that co-exist in the diverse continent that is Latin America and its relationship, and mutual exchange with globalized contemporary art. We also want to be a catalyst and platform for Latin American art on the international level. The gallery has participated in art fairs worldwide and works by gallery artists have been acquired by leading collections and institutions.

American Abstract Artists International
The Aragonese Castle of Otranto
Otranto, Italy
June 18-28, 2010

60 years ago an American Abstract Artists exhibition traveled to Europe and included stops in Rome and Munich. In June 2010, American Abstract Artists exhibited in American Abstract Artists International “L’astrazione vista da un cosmopolita” at the Aragonese Castle of Otranto in Otranto, Italy.

The exhibition included work by 50 AAA members and guest exhibitors from Italy. A brochure accompanied the exhibition, with an essay by Lucio Pozzi in three languages. The show was sponsored by BAU Institute and the Aragonese Castle of Otranto. The Aragonese Castle of Otranto is a member of Sistema Museo, a National Museum System in Italy.

Otranto is located on the Adriatic Sea, at the eastern-most point of the Salento peninsula, in the southeastern region of Puglia.

Print is an exhibition of Daniel Hill’s recent digital prints that use photography, painting and printmaking to investigate surface and light and their role in the formation of images. The work is a meditation on the nature and meaning of the digital print in the context of the perplexing network of abstraction, illusion and representation.

Daniel Hill has been exhibiting in New York City for over 30 years. His work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions. He has been the recipient of a fellowship in painting from the National Endowment for the Arts and a project studio residency at Painting Space 122 here in New York. He is a member of American Abstract Artists and is an Assistant Professor at Parsons The New School for Design.

Escape from New York
Curated by Matthew Deleget
The Engine Room
Massey University
East End Block 1
Wallace Street
Wellington, New Zealand
April 22 – May 8, 2010
Floor Talk: Wednesday, April 21, 12noon
Opening: Wednesday, April 21, 5:30pm

A group exhibition surveying reductive strategies by 29 artists living in and around New York City. Each artist presented a single work, as well as an open letter to the local artist community.

Matthew Deleget will moderate a discussion with an international group of contemporary artists including Lenora de Barros, Paul Henry Ramirez and Don Voisine. The artists will talk about the legacy of constructivist abstract art as it relates to their work and explore why abstraction continues to be a vital mode of expression.

This panel discussion is presented in honor of Elizabeth Brady Richards.

Matthew Deleget is an abstract artist, curator and writer. He is the director of MINUS SPACE, a gallery and web site project devoted to reductive art in Brooklyn, New York.

Lenora de Barros is a poet and visual artist based in São Paulo, Brazil, whose work includes video, poetic performance, photography and sound installation. Having exhibited throughout Brazil and abroad, she is interested in exploring the abstract visual, aural and material signs of language.

Paul Henry Ramirez is a US artist noted for his signature style of fleshy and pop-inspired abstraction. BLACKOUT: A Centennial Commission by Paul Henry Ramirez is a site-specific installation in which he has transformed the Newark Museum’s Charles Engelhard Court with abstract, biomorphic forms and playful, bold color.

Don Voisine is an abstract painter based in Brooklyn, New York. President of the New York-based American Abstract Artists group that was founded in 1936, he works with a visual vocabulary of pared-down geometric form to explore the possibilities of visual space within abstraction.

RELATED EXHIBITIONS
On view through 05.23.2010

Constructive Spirit
Abstract Art in South and North America, 1920s – 50s

Constructive Spirit investigates the formative geometric abstract art movements of Argentina, Brazil, the United States, Uruguay and Venezuela. This exhibition is the first to explore the conceptual connections and exchanges that existed between abstract artists from South and North America. Featured are more than 90 paintings, sculptures, prints, photographs, drawings and films drawn from the collection of the Newark Museum, along with loans from public and private collections and galleries across both continents. Artists include Alexander Calder, Joaquín Torres-García, Alejandro Otero, Gyula Kosice, Lygia Clark, Ellsworth Kelly, Geraldo de Barros and many others.

BLACKOUT
A Centennial Commission by Paul Henry Ramirez

BLACKOUT: A Centennial Commission by Paul Henry Ramirez is a site-specific installation that allows viewers to experience painting as an environment that one can enter. Using the Newark Museum’s Charles Engelhard Court as his canvas, Ramirez employs his signature curvaceous biomorphic forms amidst a profusion of pop-inspired colors in dialogue with the Court’s distinctive Beaux-Arts architecture. BLACKOUT is the fourth and final commissioned project initiated to celebrate the Museum’s Centennial year.

The Asian American Arts Alliance presents Brainstorm!, a new series of lively workshops with ideas and tools for artists to generate earned revenue. Produced in collaboration with New York Foundation for the Arts and Queens Council on the Arts.

Come hear lead speaker Chanel Kennebrew, artist and founder of www.junkprints.com talk in detail about how she successfully sells her work online, as well as the perspectives of artists Anowar Hossain, Hidemi Takagi and Matthew Deleget. Learn from peers, add your voice to a lively conversation, be inspired and come away with concrete tools for moving forward with online sales.

Organized by Gabriel J. Schuldiner, a collaborative art auction dedicated to helping the people of Haiti.

UPDATE (Friday, February 19, 2010): Delighted to announce that Wednesday night’s auction helped raise over $5,000 in support of Doctors Without Border and Haiti relief efforts. Wow! And congratulations to everyone involved.

Thanks too to Barry Hoggard and James Wagner for my purchasing my work, Ghost Painting (2007), in support of a great cause. Delighted to be included in your collection: Hoggard Wagner Art Collection.

Space Is the Place
A look back at the year in alternative art spaces and exhibitions
By Matt Morris
CityBeat
Cincinnati, Ohio
December 30, 2009

“Cincinnati’s vibrant community of alternative-exhibition spaces is my first love in this area. I am boastful of the innovations I witness in these unlikely places, where I not only exhibit my own installations but also, in several cases, help organize and curate exhibitions. I also write as an art critic for CityBeat and other publications, though I gracefully avoid reviewing my own endeavors, of course…

For me personally, as an artist, it has been a rewarding year. I have not only had the opportunity to exhibit in well-loved venues like Aisle Gallery but also been able to show — and come to know — less likely exhibition spaces, such as the stone staircase at Mount Auburn Presbyterian Church or the Campbell County Library…

Overall, these are what I found to be my the most moving alternative- and contemporary-art experiences in Cincinnati this year:

• Touch Faith at semantics (Nov. 7-28). Guest curator Jeffrey Cortland Jones brought together an accomplished set of artists from around the country to look at current practices in abstraction and painting. I will never forget the subtle and deeply moving monochrome “On the Back of a Hurricane (for Rudolf de Crignis),” [by Matthew Deleget] a simple blue rectangle that employed a plastic shopping bag for its color and texture…”

Escape from New York
Curated by Matthew Deleget
Project Space Spare Room
RMIT University School of Art
Melbourne, Australia
May 8-29, 2009

A group exhibition surveying reductive strategies by 29 artists living in and around New York City. Each artist presented a single work, as well as an open letter to the artist community affiliated with RMIT Non Objective.

Creative Reflections on War and Peace:
Pratt Alumni Survey the Experiences and Consequences of War through Written and Visual Accounts
Prattfolio: The Magazine of Pratt Institute
Fall 2008

Featured my work “From Bad to Worse to Truly Terrible”, 2007.

“Although I would never consider myself a political artist, I have been terribly concerned about the War on Terror since 9/11 and it has been occupying a clear and central role in my work over the past few years. My installation From Bad to Worse to Truly Terrible is part of an ongoing series War Monochromes. The piece, which was shown in the Sideshow Gallery in Brooklyn in September 2007, references a quote from a U.S. soldier serving his N-th tour of duty in Iraq describing the deteriorating situation on the ground. The black-on-black monochromes in this installation, made by first painting the circular canvases matte black and then pouring gloss black paint over them, occupy the space somewhere between bullet holes and oil spills. I wanted the overall installation to approximate a pockmarked wall in a combat zone.”

Escape from New York
Curated by Matthew Deleget
Sydney Non-Objective
Sydney, Australia
August 3 – September 2, 2007

A group exhibition surveying reductive strategies by 29 artists living in and around New York City. Each artist presented a single work, as well as an open letter to the artist community affiliated with Sydney Non Objective.